A couple of weeks ago, Wayne Barrett did the political world a great service with a devastating piece in the Village Voice on Rudy Giuliani and the “five big lies” surrounding the former mayor’s claim to fame: his 9/11performance. The entire piece, if read, should effectively end Giuliani’s presidential ambitions. NRO’s Ramesh Ponnuru got around to the article this week and agreed that the revelations “are, if true, pretty devastating.”
Of course, this only matters if the information reaches a large audience. Will the rest of the media scrutinize Giuliani’s record on terrorism as closely as Barrett did? If this new, well-reported article from Time magazine’s Amanda Ripley is any indication, there’s some reason for optimism.
This much is indisputable: Giuliani knows what it means to be a victim of terrorism, to lose old friends in an avalanche of violence and spit the dust of a skyscraper out of his mouth in a new, blackened world. He understands the urgency of speaking to the American people after an attack — and not circling above the ruins in Air Force One. He knows how to grieve and go to work at the same time.
But before 9/11, Giuliani spent eight years presiding over a city that was a known terrorist target. A TIME investigation into what he did — and didn’t do — to prepare for a major catastrophe is revealing. In addition to extraordinary grace under fire, Giuliani developed an intimate knowledge of emergency management and an affinity for quantifiable results. On 9/11, he earned the trust of most Americans; one year later, 78% of those surveyed by the Marist Institute had a favorable impression of Giuliani. This magazine also named Giuliani its Person of the Year in 2001. Assuming he can keep it, trust is a priceless resource in psychological warfare.
The evidence also shows great, gaping weaknesses. Giuliani’s penchant for secrecy, his tendency to value loyalty over merit and his hyperbolic rhetoric are exactly the kinds of instincts that counterterrorism experts say the U.S. can least afford right now.
Ripley bends over backwards to be almost painfully even-handed, but the piece hits most of the high points that most of the country knows almost nothing about.
Kombiz Lavasany helped compile some of the highlights:
Giuliani Has “Great, Gaping Weaknesses” Time observed the similarly to Bush’s arrogance, writing that “Giuliani’s limitations are in fact remarkably similar to those of another man who has led the nation into a war without end.”
Top GOP, Democratic, Non-Partisan Experts Alike Criticized 9/11 Preparedness and Response. John Farmer Jr., a New Jersey Republican who served as the senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission leading its study of the response said that “To say that he had identified problems and he’d been in office for a while and they hadn’t been fixed — that’s fair.” Farmer says. Jamie Gorelick, a Democratic 9/11 commissioner said that “If you compare the incident command at the Pentagon to the one at the World Trade Center, you will see the difference between life and death,” she says. Examining the long-known problems with radios, Time also cited investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which said that “If communications were better…more firefighters would have been saved.”
Giuliani Claim On Years Of Experience With Islamic Terrorism “Exaggeration.” “Giuliani and his aides have said he has been ‘studying Islamic terrorism’ for 30 years. This is an exaggeration.” Time found that he had little real experience while a prosecutor, and that in 80 major speeches from 1993 to 2001, he made only one brief mention of terrorism “in a brief reference to emergency preparedness.”
Foreign Policy Assertion “Exceedingly Unlikely” “Giuliani has also claimed he knows more about foreign policy than other candidates, but that’s exceedingly unlikely. John McCain spent 22 years as a Navy pilot and five as a prisoner of war and is now the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate, where he has served for 20 years. He has been to Iraq six times; Giuliani has never been there.”
Missing Iraq Study Group Opportunity To Hear From All The Experts. Giuliani missed the only two substantive Iraq Study Group sessions before being forced out by GOP chair Howard Baker, choosing to give paid speeches instead. Time noted that “the May session Giuliani missed was a master class on Iraq. He would have gotten briefings from General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki; and Douglas Feith, the Pentagon’s former No. 3 civilian, among others. All told, says a staffer for the Iraq Study Group, ‘they had 40 of the top experts on Iraq brief them for hours. They had access to anyone they wanted.'” Time also revealed Giuliani’s revisionist claim that he left the group to avoid a conflict with his electoral ambitions, contradicting his resignation letter citing “previous time commitments,” and commission staffers who “say they don’t remember that coming up.”
“More Confident Then Competent.” Citing his sarcastic, uniformed statements about the relative threats of Iran and North Korea , Time wrote that “on the campaign trail, Giuliani’s foreign policy comments have sometimes come off more confident than competent.”
“Record Of Flawed Judgment On Personnel.” Looking at his advisors, Time noted Giuliani’s poor track record with his advocacy of Bernie Kerik to be Secretary of Homeland Security and others. “One of the most damning criticisms of Giuliani, however, has been his record of flawed judgment on personnel… Kerik was a police officer and Giuliani’s driver before he was elevated to corrections commissioner and police chief. But the nomination collapsed when information about Kerik’s past and possible ties to mob-related businesses began to filter out…. But Giuliani’s most surprising security adviser so far is his old friend former FBI director Louis Freeh. Freeh’s stewardship of the FBI during the eight years before the bureau’s most spectacular failure makes him an unusual choice.”
There comes a point in almost every campaign narrative in which reporters get tired of reporting the same story everyone’s already heard, and start looking for ways to tell the story in a new way. The political press has already convinced a lot of the country that Giuliani is some kind of counter-terrorism expert who heroically saved New York with his bare hands. If the media gets tired of the myth, the evidence for a more accurate, and damaging, narrative is there for the taking.